cosmos

The Slow Life Or I Just Turned Fortyfive


One of the tropes of speaking about a move from the city to the "country" is that life slows down, that you slow down. Some falsely reason that to slow down, they should aim for the country. 


What I have found is the movement of the earth. I see it in the shadows and celestial bodies.


Before I can see the rising sun, a window reflects it from nearly a half mile away.


Frenetic, self-centered city life dispenses with this perception. Time is human time, measured in seconds and minutes so numerous as to seem endless. It becomes the measurement of how long to, intervals of trains, a meeting at four, of dinner at eight. Children are unformed adults wed to their colleges before they can speak (yet only they have the perception of slowed time). Nursing facilities are horror houses, what happened to these people?  Celestial events are spectacles detached from prescience. 


No, the country hasn't slowed me down. It's only made me aware of how fast we are going.



Interstellar


Two weeks ago we went to a late showing of the Chris Nolan film, Interstellar, at a three-dollar theater. The take away is manifold, but one thing sticks to my ribs: we are more than corn farmers contented to feed 5 billion people. We have to tackle our fears, (spoiler alert) we have to dive into the black hole if we are going to achieve our promise, and we can't forget who we are (emotional beings) in the process.  



Humanity hates toiling in the dirt, we're intellectual beings, explorers, so get on to it. 



Don't be nostalgic, either -leave our prior existence back where it belongs. When we're in that new place, be in that new place. Don't burden us with longings for home or waste energy trying to recreate it. Our minds are the only thing that make us unique and they are built for adaptation. Adapt.



Don't let climate calamity slide us into a new dark age -get out into the dark.